


maybe god will save me then

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: even if heaven doesn't take us we tried [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath, Body Image, Chronic Pain, Ghosts, Injury, Nicknames, Other, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 22:38:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18303227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Dean falls, and revelations follow.Followsmy heart is fading out





	maybe god will save me then

Castiel knew that something was wrong when Dean fell.

But it wasn’t just that he fell. As the days went on, they all became less attentive, stumbling and falling more and more—socked feet slipping on the tiled floor, stumbling over boxes and precarious stacks of books, tripping over their own feet, unused to the unsurety of human bodies.

So it wasn’t that Dean fell. It was _how._

He didn’t trip. Cas was watching him; there was nothing in his path. His right knee just buckled, collapsing, and Dean dropped to the ground.

If he’d caught himself, Cas wouldn’t worry. Dean was a hunter, recovering from falls was more ingrained in him than breathing. But Dean just hit the ground, so heavily that Cas worried for his wrists.

Then he didn’t get up.

Dean just folded his left leg under him and stretched out his right, hands hovering over the knee that had buckled as if he was afraid to touch it, afraid that his hands would find some damage that he couldn’t see.

That’s something that took Castiel years to learn, about Sam and Dean both. Unseen injuries meant far less than visible ones. Anything hidden under their clothes—layers of cotton and flannel and leather—anything beneath the collar and above the cuffs, everything unseen to an untrained eye was something to shrug off.

Crowley stepped into the room, a coffee mug in one hand and a balled-up tissue in the other.

Cas squeezed his eyes shut, his mind racing too fast. That was another thing he had started to take as normal—Crowley’s nearly-random lapses into tears, newly regained humanity overwhelming him with guilt and grief at the slightest of triggers, fighting to catch up with the years he hadn’t felt any of it.

Cas stood up, and pain shot through his calves and twinged in his wrists. He stopped moving for a moment, trying to pull himself together. His head spun, spots dancing across his vision. Dean had told him that was normal; blood fighting gravity to get back to his head.

It didn’t feel normal. Nothing felt normal.

Cas covered his mouth with one hand and started to cry.

Crowley crossed the distance in three quick steps and caught Cas by the elbows.

“What is it, Canary?” Crowley asked. As insensitive a metaphor as that had been the first time, it was true. Cas, more empathetic and more thoughtful than Crowley or Dean, would crumble earlier than they did. The perfect coal-mine canary. Quickly and predictably affected by what would surely harm Crowley or Dean.

Besides, it was high time that Cas had a nickname.

“We’re hurt,” Castiel sobbed, surprised, as always, by the intensity of feeling. “Dean’s knee. Your…” he gestured helplessly at Crowley’s perpetually-reddened eyes. “Even me.”

_Especially me,_ he was thinking, but didn’t say. That wasn’t fair to anyone.

“I’m fine,” Dean said, just the type to ignore a warning. He pulled himself to his feet, using the wall as balance, and fell again, crumpling gracelessly. This time, when his hands hit the floor, something cracked.

Crowley’s grip tightened on Cas’ elbows, almost painfully, and Cas didn’t realize why, until he suddenly discovered that his knees, like Dean’s, had buckled.

“Okay,” Crowley said, in that voice that meant he was prepared to shove down his own pain and take control. “Okay, Canary.”

Before Castiel blacked out, he thought he heard Crowley say _“Moose?”_

***

“How did you learn to splint?” Dean asked.

Crowley didn’t even glance at him, winding the ace bandage around Dean’s wrist, pinning the piece of wood against the inside of Dean’s forearm. “I know a lot of things,” he answered, which was true.

(He had fallen from the roof of the house, trying to fix a leak, and broken two bones. His mother had thrown a chair at him, so he’d used the broken parts as splints, and climbed back up.)

“You’re doing it again,” Dean told him.

Crowley wiped his eyes and squeezed Dean’s broken wrist until he sobbed in pain.

It wasn’t the kind of thing that should have helped either of them, but it did.

“We’re seven kinds of fucked up,” Dean said, unhelpfully.

“Shut up,” Crowley wept, wrapping the second bandage around Dean’s knee.

“How’s Cas doing?”

“I put the Canary on the couch. Out cold.”

“He’s passed out before. Usually because he forgets to sleep.”

“This is different.”

“Overwhelmed?”

“I’d guess.”

They moved away from each other, turning their backs. Even in the hugeness of the bunker, there was no privacy. The halls echoed and there were barely any doors, except for the one hallway of bedrooms and bathrooms. But they could feign respectful privacy, letting each other calm down.

Cas stirred, sitting up.

“I believe it would be beneficial for us to examine one another. Ensure that we are all aware of physical limitations and injuries.”

Crowley translated that, and opened his mouth to speak, but Cas had already shrugged off his coat and was pulling his sweatshirt over his head.

_Oh, what the hell,_ he thought, scrubbing his eyes. “Now?”

“Before one of becomes self-conscious,” Castiel explained, giving Dean that look, the one that meant that even as Cas began to understand human culture, Dean’s forceful insistence on his heterosexuality, and what behaviors were and were not acceptable between men would never be comprehensible to him.

Dean just responded with a bitch-face that reminded Crowley of Moose.

So they stripped, right there where they stood, with no commentary. Two of the three bodies were borrowed, then stolen, anyway, and Crowley knew that Dean’s was a hotel he’d taken up residence in, if anything. Perpetual injury did that to a person.

Dean’s body was marked with purplish bruises, the most obvious around his right knee, which was noticeably swollen when compared to his left. His face was pale and drawn, etched with pain. He favored his left side entirely, and his hands trembled. He carried more weight than he had when he was constantly active, but his muscles still stood out under his skin, tense with the effort of holding his battered body upright. He was littered with scars, but none of them new.

Castiel was thin and drawn, except where weight had gathered in his stomach from days of inactivity and the diet of mostly comfort food and takeout that came from living with Dean Winchester. He was more bruised than Dean, but most of them were old, yellow-brown instead of purple.

There was no mirror in this particular room. There were barely any, other than in the bathroom. There was probably a reason for that. (Sam would know). With that lack, and no desire on anyone’s part of remedy it, Crowley couldn’t get as good a look at himself as he could the other two. He didn’t really need to; his harm was mental and he knew it. Aside from the aching marks on his neck that seemed set on never quite healing, he hadn’t changed much.

He’d chosen this body for a reason. Fallen in love with it, in a way, as soon as he saw it. Heavyset, like the royalty had been when Crowley was human, was Fergus. Weight gathered in the stomach and arms instead of in the hips and thighs like Fergus’ body, making a square, imposing figure. Thick, stubby fingers, strong but soft. A soft jaw, with a scruff of beard, and bright eyes of a color that he couldn’t quite determine. Curved, dark brows, and a smile that did something to Crowley’s not-yet-existent stomach.

He still looked like that, except for the smile, because he didn’t.

Crowley pointed at Castiel. “You should sleep more.” He turned his gaze to Dean. “I don’t know anything about modern medicine, but I suggest taking more baths. I’ll write down a list of herbs.”

“Who put you in charge?” Dean snapped. Crowley rolled his eyes.

“Sam, if you really want to know.”

Castiel hissed in a breath. Crowley felt the temperature in the room drop.

“What.” It was too flat to be a question, but Crowley could hear the plea.

“When he was curing me,” Crowley said, almost against his will. “He asked me to take care of you, if I made it out and he didn’t.”

“He knew,” Dean breathed. “He knew.”

“Of course he knew. _I_ knew, and I was delirious. The only reason you couldn’t tell is because you were in denial.”

“Don’t,” Cas said. “Don’t fight.”

“We’re not fighting,” Crowley retorted, which was true, because a fight needed participation from both sides, and Dean wasn’t fighting back. He was just standing there and crying.

Crowley turned and left. Not just the room, the bunker itself. He didn’t take the key, even though it was hanging by the door, in full view.

He heard Dean fall again as he closed the door behind him.

***

It was probably supposed to be a very dramatic exit, Dean guessed. Exit stage Crowley. Drop a bombshell and leave, not to return.

It would have worked, too, but Cas was stubborn. He settled Dean on the ground, minding his bum knee and broken wrist, grabbed the key off the wall, and followed Crowley out the door.

Dean leaned against the wall and waited, watching the clock. Almost exactly five minutes later, the bunker door unlocked, and Cas dragged Crowley inside.

Cas was smiling in that pleased, cat-got-the-cream sort of way. Crowley was crying, but that wasn’t unusual. For all Dean knew, Cas had set him off so he’d be easier to lead back in.

“Well, that was short-lived,” Crowley muttered, once he’d composed himself. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Dean blinked, processing. They were all still in boxers and socks after Castiel’s impromptu physical-slash-eyesex. He doubted Cas even knew that his staring was so intimate, or that stripping was something vaguely taboo.

“I think I’m still a little psychotic,” he told Cas. “My thoughts are going everywhere.”

“Your thoughts have always gone everywhere,” Cas answered. “Though psychosis is not out of the question.”

“I don’t want to hunt anymore.” Dean said, without thinking. He missed Sam, suddenly, so fiercely that it tore at him, sharper than his broken wrist, a deeper ache than his knee, which had suddenly given out after weeks-months-years of hurting and felt like it would never work again.

“I know.” Cas said, and let Dean sob into his shoulder for a few minutes, before getting up and bringing him a dose of the strongest pain medication they kept in the house.

When Crowley emerged, half an hour later with wet hair, he carried Dean to bed, and wrapped a heat pack around his knee.

Drowsily, he lifted one hand and caught Crowley’s. He didn’t lace their fingers together, like he might do with Cas, he just held on. “Why are you trying to be my father?”

“Neither of us have one,” Crowley answered, without missing a beat. “I was a terrible one. Fresh start for us both.”

“I’m not your son,” Dean said, and expected Crowley to flinch, but he just smiled.

“Good,” Crowley answered. “That wouldn’t work for either of us. You’d probably kill me.”

“Lots of patricide in my family,” Dean pulls himself up, using his grip on Crowley’s hand as leverage. “Did you kill your father?”

“He left even before my mother did,” Crowley sighed, resting his free hand on Dean’s shoulder. Dean set his other hand on top of Crowley’s, mindlessly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it.

“Maybe I’d be a better person if anyone had ever loved me.”

“Fresh start, right?”

“Goodnight, Squirrel.”

Dean closed his eyes. He heard, faintly, “Goodnight, Moose.”

***

“Why did you say goodnight to Sam?” Castiel asked, the moment Crowley closed the door of Dean’s room behind him.

Crowley didn’t answer. His posture changed, the stiffness of his shoulders and spine relaxing. He ran a hand through his thinning hair.

“Hey, Cas.” Sam said, through Crowley’s mouth, in his own accent. “You should have burned me.”


End file.
